The Sword of Shannara

Last Christmas Santa was kind enough and brought me so many books. Among them there was the one that I am going to be talking today: The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks.

Let´s start by saying that I first became aware of this books after the MTV show was released last year and I became obsessed with it. I really like the premised of a fantasy world, how everything was conducted and, of course oi liked the cast. I realized it was based on a book and I do some research just to find out that the first book was forgotten and not used and the went straight forward to the second book on the series.  However, the show was easy to follow.

The first book, for those that know about the show follows the story of Shea and Flick Ohmsford. These two brothers live in the south and one day they are told by a mysterious character in black a story about Shea´s ancestors and from there the two brothers are involved in a quest to find an ancient sword that seems to be the key to save mankind.

The premise seems to be really interesting and the writing was really compelling. The characters however were not my favorite ones.

 Some of them were extremely volatile and change its personality very five minutes of just very two lines (those who have already read the book may agree with me if I quote Menion as an example). The two brothers, who seem to be the main characters of the book, are neither people I particularly like. For instance, Shea is ways to pussy and Flick way too cynical for my taste.  I didn’t quite enjoy the characters: why did I keep reading until then?

I keep reading until the end, first of all because I don’t like to quite books and the cases in which I do so are rare. And even I found some flaws to the characters I found the story to be entertaining enough to keep reading until the end even when the book was extremely long for what it was.

The point to of my biggest disappointment, however, was when I realized that what I was reading was quite similar to The Lord of the Rings. I am not a fan of those books, in fact I don´t know if I like them. I have just watched the movies and that took me quite a while. I was watching them for over a month because and masoquist and I was watching them like a show. I need a break after every 30 minutes of movie.

I have heard that Terry Brooks is one of the most valuated fantasy writers of the present day. I can get why by reading his book, because the writing was magnificent and I really enjoyed. But there were many descriptions and very few dialogues, that make the reading slow. It didn’t help either that the chapters were as long as they were and I have the sensation that I have not read that much because I had just read five chapters, when I fact I had read over 100 pages.

Overall I gave this book 3 out of 5 stars and for now I will continue with the saga. But so far just with the main one. I´ve been doing some research and there are at least other 3 sagas that occur within the Shannara universe and so far I cannot say that I am committed for such a long journey.

What do you guys think of this book? Have you watched the TV show? If so, did you like it?

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See you next Wednesday